Combined the two leading donation-based crowdfunding sites have raised over $750 million and have created the world’s largest free donation crowdfunding site

San Francisco, California – YouCaring announced that it has acquired GiveForward. GiveForward has been a pioneer in crowdfunding medical expenses for individuals and has helped people raise nearly $200 million. Combined with YouCaring, which has helped people around the world raise over $550 million for critical personal, medical, and charitable causes, this acquisition will expand YouCaring’s fundraising and donor reach.

Combined the two leading donation-based Crowdfunding Sites have raised over $750 Million and have created the world’s largest free donation crowdfunding site

For the GiveForward community, YouCaring offers an optimized on-site experience, robust marketing tools for fundraisers, real-time customer support, and the ability to reach a donor pool of six million. GiveForward users can expect increased campaign performance and an expanded customer support system to meet their fundraising goals.

Unlike other crowdfunding sites, YouCaring does not charge fundraisers a fee to raise money on the platform and relies on voluntary donations from donors to fund their operations. As a Certified B Corporation®, YouCaring is committed to advancing social good and adheres to strict standards for consumer advocacy.

“We’re excited to welcome GiveForward users to the YouCaring community. GiveForward has been a leader in medical crowdfunding for nearly a decade,” said Dan Saper, YouCaring’s CEO. “With health care costs continuing to rise for consumers, building a platform that can help relieve that stress is critically important to us. The GiveForward brand and what it stands for couldn’t be more aligned with who we are and what we do here at YouCaring.”

Desiree Vargas Wrigley, a co-founder of GiveForward, added, “We started GiveForward to help change the way people care about each other. We’re happy to see that vision expanded to the tremendous global community of supporters YouCaring has built.”

YouCaring focuses on Compassionate Crowdfunding™ and believes that no one should have to face hardship alone. Their community of worldwide donors is more than six million strong, and to date, have raised over $550 million. The company does not charge platform fees to fundraise, and like its fundraisers, relies on donations from generous supporters to finance its operation.

GiveForward has been a leader in medical crowdfunding. Since inception in 2008, GiveForward has raised nearly $200 million for people in need, and has empowered 270,000 people to raise money for their causes.

Google search “Robert Hoskins Crowdfunding” to see why Mr. Hoskins is considered one of the industry’s foremost crowdfunding experts that has amassed a huge social media following, which is dedicated to supporting donation, rewards and equity crowdfunding campaigns.

GoFundMe now dominates the crowdfunding space, with 41% of Americans aware of the site; IndieGoGo comes in at number two at 13%

New York, NY – According to the latest YouGov Omnibus research crowdfunding’s charitable sweet spot focuses squarely on donations to individuals in need. For those who have donated via crowdfunding sites, 45% have given to an individual person in need, compared to only 22% who have given to a charity like the Red Cross, or 20% who have given to social causes like homelessness. 16% have given to disaster relief or individual animals in need. Global environmental causes garnered only 12% amongst crowdfunding donors.

YouGov OmniBus Research Report on Crowdfunding Donations

By contrast Americans who donate via any channel say the single channel they are most likely to donate to is a charitable organization (25%) compared to 17% who prefer to give to individuals.

Charities Still Most Effective Use of Funds: Politicians Least Effective

In terms of effectiveness, more than half of Americans who donate via any channel (52%) think that the most effective home for a donation is a charitable organization. Nearly a third (32%) think gifts to individuals are the most effective.

Practically nobody (2%) thinks that politicians are the most effective recipients of donations intended to promote a cause.

Most Popular Crowdfunding Sites

GoFundMe now dominates the crowdfunding space, with 41% of Americans aware of the site; IndieGoGo comes in at number two at 13%. Millennials are more aware of their crowdfunding options with 47 % awareness for GoFundMe and more than one in five (21%) aware of IndieGoGo.

For all those who have heard of a crowdfunding site 20% have given money via GoFundMe. Higher earners (32%) and women (25%) are most likely to have contributed to a GoFundMe campaign.

A quarter (24%) of all American adults have been invited to contribute to a crowdfunded charity via social media. A further 16% has received solicitations via email.

There will be a rising tide of third-party crowdfunding service providers needed to produce Private Placement Memorandums (PPMs) and necessary disclosure documentation.

State banks will seize the opportunity to create new revenue streams by setting up crowdfunding equity escrow services that larger banks will probably ignore.

Advertising, PR and social media firms will improve the success rate of million dollar crowdfunding campaigns to more than a 50% success rate regardless of crowdfunding site.

Major corporations like Sony will begin to launch substantial crowdfunding campaigns to test the market demand for their company’s latest and greatest high-tech, clean-tech, bio-tech, fin-tech and film/music products and services

Major corporations will follow IBM’s example by opening their own intranet crowdfunding platforms to allow employees to fast track innovative products and services by using crowdfunding campaigns to override political and corporate management roadblocks.

Major publishing houses will follow Reddit’s and YouTube’s example by launching their own crowdfunding platforms to harness mature electronic commerce & marketing capabilities.

Real Estate will lead the marketplace in offering attractive equity crowdfunding deal flow.

Texas will become one of the largest equity crowdfunding markets in the United States.

More than 50% of U.S. states will approve crowdfunding exemptions by the end of 2015.

By Q4 2015 a secondary market will begin to emerge for trading equity crowdfunding shares.

Crowdfunding investing will cause private equity investors and venture capitalists to lose their ability to take advantage of startups/entrepreneurs who will find it much easier to raise venture capital funding.

Non-profit fundraising organizations will move their entire fundraising operations to a pure online donation-based crowdfunding platform to substantially streamline their organizations and reduce their operating expenses.

As in many early growth industries, large players like GoFundMe, IndieGoGo and Kickstarter will begin buying up smaller sites to increase market share and expand their global presence.

Austin, Texas – Want to know who the Top 100 Fastest Growing Crowdfunding sites in the world are? The graph above shows the top 10 crowdfunding sites based on their website’s internet traffic. From a competitive analysis standpoint it might make you wonder how these companies are growing at such a phenomenal rate.

What type of marketing campaigns are they running to achieve this success? Advertising? Email Marketing? Affiliate Marketing? Referral Partners? Direct Traffic? Search Engine Results? Alexa provides a little bit of information, Compete has even less, but SimilarWeb is building a great business by providing a ton of competitive information that up and coming crowdfunding sites and crowdfunding campaign managers can use to improve their marketing efforts.

Want to see the competitive analysis marketing report for each of the sites below? Simply click the % link for each one and you’ll be able to see what type of marketing campaigns are driving these sites’ traffic, where that traffic is coming from, where their visitors are going next, plus a whole lot more.

For examples, scroll down to the bottom of this page to see what types of marketing programs are driving the top 10 crowdfunding site’s rapid acceleration of website traffic.

If you would like to receive an Excel Spreadsheet that has last year’s statistics, this year’s stats, as well as the list of the Top 100 Crowdfunding Sites sorted by overall global ranking, fastest growing and biggest losses in website traffic, then follow these instructions to receive a free copy:

Friday, March 7
12:30PM – 1:30PM

Chris Tyrell and Jessica Randaza will be speaking about the widely anticipated Title III crowdfunding rules that were approved unanimously by the SEC and successfully completely the 90-day public comment period. Now the entire United States is waiting to see what changes, if any, the SEC will make to the previously approved rules. The new regulations will add approximately 229 million new unaccredited investors to the pool of potential investors that will soon be able to make investments in startups and existing businesses seeking venture capital in return for an attractive return-on-investment (ROI). Read more…

Friday, March 7
12:30PM – 1:30PM

David Neff and Miriam Kagan will cover crowdfunding models that range from self-starting “fund my trip” models to a more established national community foundation-led model that raised over $20 million in one day. Next they will cover crowdfunding industry growth, and the ethical questions that have surrounded old school “fundraising” by non-profits for many years. How much money actually goes to the beneficiaries and where does the rest end up? Session participants will led through an exercise that will allow the group to see the necessary requirements to build a thorough Crowdfunding Bill of Rights. Read more…

Friday, March 7
5:00PM – 6:00PM

Digital Health is a growing market for crowdfunding dollars, with relatively few prolific angel and venture investors, entrepreneurs are getting creative about ways to find alternative venture capital. This healthcare crowdfunding presentation will examine the funding options available for various healthcare entrepreneurs at any stage. Read more…

This panel discussion will feature four social good crowdfunding platforms that are focused on donation-based crowdfunding missions to improve the world for social good. These platforms allow the privileged to make tax deductible donations to those who are not lucky enough to have nutritious food, clean water, bathrooms with flushing toilets or weatherproofed housing. It will humble you to learn what conditions many third world country people actually live with little hope for help from the outside world. With your help, these organizations can help you help them change the lives of many and get a tax deduction for helping. Whether you attend this panel discussion or not, please make at $25 donation to one or all four of the organizations. Read more…

Saturday, March 8
3:30PM – 4:30PM

An increasing number of brave researchers are venturing out from the ivory towers of academia to pursue their own independent research. This new culture of indie science attracts investigators with the freedom to develop their ideas without the confines of politics and bureaucracy often found in academic departments. Read more…

Sunday, March 9
11:00AM – 1:30PM

This two and a half hour long workshop, designed for DIY crowdfunders, will go over some PR best practices, strategies and tactics on how to create interest for crowdfunded projects based on conversations with individuals who’ve run successful Kickstarter campaigns and their interaction with reporters. It will cover planning & strategy, timing, pitch writing, story angles, social media, approaching reporters, how to avoid “dead zone” during a campaign, and more. Read more…

Sunday, March 9
11:00AM – 12:00PM

Jason Best will address the outstanding opportunity for Crowdfunding that exists in emerging markets that have been cut off from international venture capital markets. He will examine how giving third world countries access to billions of dollars of capital has the ability to challenge the United States’ ability to stay competitive in the global market place. Read more…

Sunday, March 9
5:00PM – 6:00PM

Neil Dipaola will focus on how risk capital has brought about significant change to the high technology industry for more than a generation. He will differentiate the opportunities that exist outside of the risky young 20-something millenials’ visionary gadgets. Even though high-tech gadgets generate many front page news stories, Neil will encourage attendees to take a close look at the real estate industry, which is much more established and offers more traditional and proven investment opportunities. Read more…

Monday, March 10
11:00AM – 12:00PM

Douglas Ellenoff, Partner & Owner, Ellenoff Grossman & Schole LLP

Judd Hollas, CEO, EquityNet LLC

Judy Robinett, Angel Investor & VC Board Member

In 2013, the ban on general solicitation of accredited investors was lifted, causing the largest change to securities laws in decades. While everyone from startups to hedge funds will enjoy new liberties to begin marketing equity investment deals through advertising, marketing and PR campaigns, it’s critical that the new rules are followed to the letter in order to eliminate the chance for an exemption rescission. Read more…

Monday, March 10
12:45PM – 1:00PM

Matthew Bishop will address harnessing viral marketing to achieve a successful crowdfunding campaign. He asks, “So you want to raise money online and go viral?” Mr. Bishop’s SxSW crowdfunding presentation will help nonprofits, artists, and entrepreneurs learn how to create crowdfunding a project. His subject matters will include how a tell a story, manage a team and leverage game playing lessons that will help develop a viral buzz that may make or break the success fundraising campaigns. Read more….

Tuesday, March 11
9:30AM – 10:30AM

Adam Carolla and Bill Zanker provide in inside look at how crowdfunding platforms like FundAnything are turning Hollywood upside down by completely changing the way movies are financed and produced. Like many entrepreneurs in Hollywood, Adam decided to circumvent the system by teaming up with Bill Zanker’s FundAnything and ended up raising $1.5 million that allowed him to create one the most downloaded podcast series in history. Attendees will learn from Adam’s personal insights on how to use the right rewards to achieve the best results and why taping into your own crowd of social media contacts can deliver serious dividends. Read more…

Tuesday, March 11
11:00AM – 12:00PM

Maz Kessler’s presentation will focus building a world of equality for all girls and women. Due to the fact that less than 7% of fundraising donations go to girls and women’s causes combined with the alarming news that one-in-four of women organizations that work on these issues are in danger of closing, Catapult.com was founded to keep the funding rolling in.

The group’s mission is to work on the battle front to fight for the rights and the respect for girls and women around the world. And to date, Catapult has achieved incredible results by raising millions of dollars through its nonprofit partners, which are growing rapidly throughout the world. Read more…

Tuesday, March 11
12:30PM – 1:30PM

Funded in Austin features Founder/CEO’s of three technology startups who have pursued and secured investment in their entrepreneurial ventures – one from crowdfunding, one from angel funding, and one from venture capital – totaling more than $302 million in funding. Read more…

The FunderHut team is very excited to announce our new partnership with Chicago Non-Profit, Chicagoland’s Nonprofit Chamber of Commerce! FunderHut is a community-crowdfunding platform, and although we’re national, what better way to start than with our own Chicago community? We’re extremely excited to be working together to make a positive impact in the community.

FunderHut’s team believes the community plays an essential role in our everyday lives. Whether it’s your family, your neighborhood, your social clubs, or the worldwide community, these are the people and the environment that construct who we are, so why not make it better? Our motto is Finding Unity By Funding Community.

From networking events to educational events to fundraising events, Chicago Non-Profit is the number one resource for Chicagoland’s non-profits, using their extensive knowledge and resources to help their members achieve their goals. As fundraising continues to be a primary concern for these organizations, the idea of crowdfunding only seemed natural, and FunderHut welcomed the opportunity to help Chicago’s non-profits raise money and build awareness, as well as the added benefit of an increased donor base. The vision and vast network of Chicago Non-Profit, with non-profit categories ranging from Arts Awareness to Community Works to Medical Research, helps create a partnership with a shared mission in mind, improving our community.

What’s our goal? To provide non-profits with the resources they need to launch an online fundraising campaign, while receiving full support from the collaboration between Chicago Non-Profit and FunderHut.

As an exclusive benefit to Chicago Non-Profit members, we’re also returning 20% of the contribution fees. What this means is that not only is it absolutely free to sign up and create your campaign, but 20% will be given back to member organizations that launch their campaign on FunderHut.

Austin, Texas – Despite the SEC’s attempt to slow the equity crowdfunding industry down, every other segment of the crowdfunding industry is breaking records worldwide as small businesses and entrepreneurs are raising billions of dollars to get their business ideas and creative projects off the ground. If fact, by the time the SEC finally issues their formal guidelines, it may be too late to get small businesses interested in turning over any equity at all. Why give up any control of your business, when you can successfully raise $10,000,000 through rewards-based, perks-based or donation-based crowdfunding campaigns? [Click to Tweet]

Click on the web site traffic links below to research potential crowdfunding websites and their ability to reach your crowdfunding PR campaigns desired target audience.

Many readers first visit the Crowdfunding Press Center to learn more about the booming crowdfunding industry and try to get a handle on how to select the best crowdfunding website to launch a fundraising campaign and learn what it takes to plan a successful crowdfunding campaign.

Launching a crowdfunding campaign is nothing more than a fancy way to describe a typical product/service marketing launch. The only real difference between a crowdfunding campaign and an old-fashioned product marketing/PR launch is the time period for collecting money.

In the past, companies have created new products, built company websites and used marketing, advertising, social networks and PR campaigns to raise awareness among the correct target audience to entice new/existing customers to buy their product or service.

eCommerce or the process of collecting money online is nothing new. Collecting money or pre-selling a product/service, however, is a totally new concept and seems to be working very well. Marketers love it because they can actually test demand for a product or service prior to investing a lot of time, effort and money to bring a product to market.

If a crowdfunding campaigns fails, entrepreneurs will actually save a lot of money that would have been invested in a new business that probably would have failed in a couple of years. If the crowdfunding campaign is a successful and you raise several million dollars, you can bet that venture capitalists and angel investors will be very interested in buying equity stock the old fashioned way.

The one question that everyone wants to get answered is what is the best crowdfunding website to utilize when launching a fundraising campaign. The answer is simple. Like advertising or generating publicity in any communications medium, the most important question to answer is who is the desired target audience of donors and what kind of demographics/psychographics can be utilized to create effective marketing messages to convince the masses to donate money to your cause, creative project or new business idea.

Once the target audience has been identified it is easy to target media usage patterns to find the right mix of media outlets needed to achieve both reach and frequency to reach the correct target audience with the perfect message for the lowest cost -per-thousand (CPM). This is how marketeers have been conducting marketing campaigns for almost a century.

In today’s world, reach and frequency is tied directly to search engine optimization (SEO) and social networks along with traditional media outlets.

To help marketing/PR executives as well as crowdfunding campaign managers discover this type of information, we have analyzed what we consider to be the top 100 crowdfunding sites worldwide. We ranked crowdfunding websites by their global website traffic as well as numerous other analytics including traffic stats, search analytics, audience readership, reviews, backlinks and upstream/downstream websites generating traffic.

It will not take long before media reps, media outlets and website auditing companies jump into crowdfunding market to start providing in-depth research reports, crowdfunding website audit statements and other readership studies that detail their website’s ability to reach the desired pool of investors/donors via their crowdfunding platform or website.

Austin, Texas – Thinking about launching a Crowdfunding campaign to raise money to fund your creative business idea and bring it to fruition? The Crowdfunding Press Center provides regular news reports on new Crowdfunding sites that have opened their doors to help entrepreneurs and small businesses launch fundraising campaigns to help bring their ingenious business ideas to fruition.

Top 10 Crowdfunding Sites for 2014

The big question that most crowdfunding campaign managers want to know is what crowdfunding site is the best to launch their fundraising campaign? Kickstarter vs. Indiegogo, which crowdfunding site is better? Or would one of the other crowdfunding sites outlined below be a better match for their precise crowdfunding goals and objectives.

Upset at the Amount of Donations Actually Donated to Cancer Research, Start A Cure Lauches World’s First Crowdfunding Site Directed Entirely to Cancer Research Funding

Start A Cure is the world’s first patient focused research crowdfunding platform to be entirely directed at cancer. Start A Cure launched with a call to action to a small portion of our cancer researcher contacts to upload projects for funding beginning on June 1, 2013 for beta testing. Start A Cure is the crowdfunding for cancer research project created by the national patient advocacy nonprofit, Malecare, which is one of America’s largest men’s cancer support and advocacy national nonprofit corporations.

Upset at the Amount of Donations Actually Donated to Cancer Research, Start A Cure Lauches World’s First Crowdfunding Site Directed Entirely to Research Funding

Listening to its large cancer survivor community, Malecare learned about the large untapped pool of potential donors who want more control over where their money goes. Right or wrong, these potential donors are cynical about the way research projects are selected by government agencies and foundations for funding. They would rather choose specific projects to fund and have the opportunity to connect directly with the scientists guiding those projects. Many are also unhappy about the small percentage of donated dollars that researchers receive from government and charitable foundations. Malecare and its all-volunteer cancer survivor leadership decided to act. The emergence of crowdfunding websites, like Kickstarter and Indiegogo and pro bono finance sites such as Kiva provoked an opportunity to create a new kind of platform that both informs and empowers cancer patients and their family, friends and allies to directing their funding dollars towards research that can have meaning in their lives. Start A Cure instantly received support from the cancer researcher community. Dozens of cancer project managers from leading institutions and academic centers like Harvard, John’s Hopkins, UCLA and MD Anderson requested that their research be part of Start A Cure’s launch. By posting text and video of individual researchers and their current projects, Start A Cure raises both funds and awareness for cancer research. Donors search and browse through a menu of current research projects and choose to donate funds to projects that resonate in their own lives. By creating an efficient web based distribution system, Start A Cure is able to distribute 92% of funds raised directly to researchers, far more than any other cancer research funding scheme. Start A Cure also helps inspire students and provides hope to our cancer survivor community, by highlighting the people working night and day to develop better treatments and cures; helping us all live happier and longer lives. Projects include those that have already received foundation, government and other grants, along with projects seeking proof of concept funding. Start A Cure will quickly become the fundraising platform for all tumor types. Start A Cure is entirely complementary and supportive of the existing fundraising foundations and modalities and will only grow our cancer research capacities, worldwide.

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I would like to set up a Crowdfunding Consultation call to learn more about the Crowdfunding process

Kickstarter and IndieGoGo have become thriving, efficient markets for firms and ventures to raise new capital for and awareness around projects. 2013 estimates for crowdfunding top $5.1 billion, an 89% increase from 2012, and millions of projects big and small have benefitted from crowdfunding campaigns.

An Empirical Examination of the Antecedents and Consequences of Contribution Patterns in Crowd-Funded Markets

In new research forthcoming in Information Systems Research, Anindya Ghose, NYU Stern Associate Professor of Information, Operations and Management Sciences and co-Director of the Center for Business Analytics, with Gordon Burtch at the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management and Sunil Wattal at Temple University’s Fox School of Business, quantifies how donors influence each other in the crowdfunding process, and finds that quick fundraising, while seemingly desirable, can have downsides.

The authors study a crowdfunding market that supports journalists who raise money to research and write stories for online publication and find that:

A longer fundraising campaign increases a project’s future demand: Projects that take twice as long to meet their fundraising target experience, on average, a 22% increase in demand after the project is completed (in this case, published articles draw more readers), because they have more time to build online word of mouth.

Rapid success with crowdfunding will jeopardize the end goal: When fundraising goals are achieved very quickly, donations on the following day decline by 32%, on average.

To give is to receive: In this specific market which is donation-based and deals with publicly-available online journalism (and can be viewed as a public good), the findings suggest that altruism is a key incentive to contribute.

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